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Apollo Summiteers are off to Capitol Hill today, meeting with congresspeople and their staffs and pressing for increased government support of renewable energy.

Before they took to the Hill, Rep. Jay Inslee (WA) addressed the Summit and deemed the Apollo Alliance the "most important coalition" in America today, because "this is a matter of our American destiny ... to lead the world in solving this global warming crisis."

Though he cautioned that without strong government policies to quickly create clean energy jobs, those jobs would go to other countries such as China, Germany, England and Denmark.

He argued that a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions was needed to create those jobs. Otherwise, "companies use the atmosphere as their garbage dump for free."

Inslee characterized the debate as between "the optimists and pessimists," and Americans are "the greatest optimists in the world and the greatest innovators in the world."

And with that, the Apollo optimists headed to the Hill.

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Monday night's dinner speakers offered a common theme: the future of our economy is tied to the future of our environment.

Keynote speaker Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell emphasized that the development of renewable energy is not just "a race for energy independence" but also "a race for economic superiority," where we will lose our strong economic position in the world if we drag our feet. "It is absolutely criminal that we are moving at a snail's pace." (Watch the video.)

Gov. Rendell pointed to the Gamesa wind energy project in Pennsylvania as a model. Gamesa representative Michael Peck already addressed the dinner audience, explaining how their "sustainable partnership" with the United Steelworkers is on its way to bring 1,000 good-pay, high-skill union jobs to the Keystone State.

(Check out this American Prospect piece for more about how the Gamesa project came to be.)

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Oh, it's on.

After Gov. Deval Patrick declared his intention to make Massachusetts the capital of renewable energy, Gov. Bill Ritter threw down the gauntlet on behalf of his Colorado.

Patrick, who won election promising support for a groundbreaking wind farm off of Cape Cod, announced yesterday (watch the video):

I don't just want the wind farms. I want the companies that build the turbines. I want the ones that assemble the hybrid vehicles and consult on the conservation strategies. I want the companies that design and manufacture the solar panels. The whole integrated industry ought to and can have a place in Massachusetts ... I really believe that if we get this right the whole world will be our customer.

Then Ritter (watch the video) upped the ante:

Governor Patrick talks about bringing jobs to Massachusetts. We're going to arm wrestle you for those jobs because we want those same manufacturing plants.

This competition is nothing but healthy for our energy future, as Ritter noted:

...that's a good thing to have two governors competing for those jobs, competing in this industry to build out the turbines competing, to have the wind farms located in their state. That's the right way for us to think about it.

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Damon Silvers, Associate General Counsel of the AFL-CIO stunned the room this afternoon, announcing that while there's $160 trillion of fossil fuels currently underground, the economic costs of unchecked climate change will total between $700 and $1,400 trillion -- possibly causing a global depression.

Silvers said that's why the AFL-CIO backs investing union pension assets into clean energy funds -- because you're not responsibly investing for the future, if you're not investing in a sustainable future.

Further, Tom Croft of the Heartland Network stressed that it's important for unions to control their assets and invest in sustainable projects that will create good jobs.

Investment experts at the "Moving Labor & Public Pension Funds into Clean Energy Investments" panel assured attendees that the rapid growth of the clean energy market means it's easier to create financially sound, diversified portfolios.

In turn, there is no trade-off between investing green and making green. With the help of folks who know the energy industry , it's not hard to do both.

And since there are hundreds of billions of dollars in union pension funds, a clean energy investment strategy may have significant impact.

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This morning's "Policies and Partnerships for a Clean Power Future" session found wide agreement from union officials and business leaders on how we should reform our energy policies.

Todd Foley of BP Solar and Jim Gordon of Cape Wind both lamented the "start and stop" nature of our government's involvement in promoting renewable energy.

Gordon advocated long-term policies, including tax incentives for production and power-purchasing agreements with utilities, while IBEW Local 103's Marty Aikens supported residential tax credits .

Lee Smith of the National Photovoltaic Construction Partnership pushed for state and local governments to create more demand by purchasing clean energy from domestic manufacturers. Foley concurred that if smart policies create domestic markets, home-grown manufacturing will make good business sense.

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By retrofitting our nation's buildings to make them energy efficient, we can improve the environment, save consumers money, create good-paying union jobs, and reduce poverty.

That's the word from the panelists at today's "High Performance Buildings & Job Creation" session.

Don Gilligan of the National Association of Energy Services Companies told the crowd that a $7 billion annual investment would save consumers $22 billion in energy costs by 2017, while also creating 400,000 jobs annually.

Steve Cowell of the non-profit consultant Conservation Services Group explained that the new jobs would not come and go after buildings get retrofitted, but good-paying high-skill permanent jobs would be created to operate and manage energy efficient buildings.

And that's a good fit for unions.

And Elsa Barboza of the grassroots Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education, and of the Los Angeles Apollo Alliance, talked of how green buildings can strengthen unions and tackle poverty on a mass scale.

Her team is striving to secure $100 million in public funds to retrofit 100 municipal buildings and create 2,000 union jobs.

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Today in Washington, labor leaders, environmental activists, business executives, elected officials and community organizers are convening for the Apollo Summit For Clean Energy & Good Jobs.

The broad array of participants -- brought together by our Apollo Alliance coalition -- are finding critical common ground: highlighting state and local projects that have enhanced energy independence while creating jobs with good pay and benefits, and developing strategies that can build on these successes nationwide.

I'll be liveblogging the action for the rest of today and tomorrow, and our friends at PoliticsTV will be posting video highlights and interviews. Keep checking back!

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I got hooked on Keith Olbermann after coming upon a clip of his in October 2005. more »

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CQPolitics.com today highlights new research from the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, finding that minimum wage initiatives in five states significantly boosted voter turnout:

Voter motivation and reported interest in the election was disproportionately high among Democratic base voters, African-Americans, unmarried voters and women — especially where minimum wage initiatives were in play...

...[For example,] Democrats in Missouri were twice as likely to vote for Senate challenger Claire McCaskill, who upset Republican incumbent Jim Talent, because of an initiative to increase the state’s minimum wage that won easy approval in November with 76 percent of the vote.

According to Gail Stoltz, a campaign strategist on the issue during Missouri’s 2006 election, the minimum wage measure “was particularly motivating for those who are truly economically stressed.”

The power of the wage issue is something for Congress to consider, as Senate conservatives continue threatening to block a wage hike.

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NPR's Morning Edition aired a piece earlier this week about a burgeoning trend: corporations giving money to unions and handing off the responsibility of providing health care.

With costs skyrocketing, these companies believe paying a lump sum now is better than being crushed by rising costs later.

While the trust being put into unions is nice, it feels more like a panic move as our current health care system continues to crumble all around us. As SEIU's Andy Stern says:

It is time to admit that the employer-based health care system is dead, a relic of the industrial economy. America cannot compete in the new global economy when we are the only industrialized nation on earth that puts the price of healthcare on the cost of our products.

This development is merely a cry for fundamental, comprehensive reform. Check out our Health Care For All page for more.

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